Iter Durum
by icepixel
Summary: November is hard for Susan Ivanova, and Michael has learned to give her space on the anniversary of Marcus's death.  It might go on like this forever, but the universe has other plans.  Closet Idealism AU.


—_And what did he die of so young, Gretta? Consumption, was it?_  
—_I think he died for me, she answered._

— _James Joyce, "The Dead"_

November is hard. Especially the week at the very end. Every year she hopes it will hurt less, and every year it does, but the pain diminishes with the approximate speed of a bird emptying a beach by carrying away the grains of sand one by one in its tiny beak.

The image is from something Marcus liked. How appropriate; the date, the twenty-two on the calendar that has been dogging her all day, is the anniversary of his death. She's now been alive eight years longer than she would have been without his intervention. Everything she has now is predicated on what he gave up then.

November is hard.

Michael has learned to give her space on this anniversary. The one next week, the tenth since Talia's death (or at least the death of the Talia she knew), they talk about at times, acknowledge in some fashion each time it comes around. But Marcus... Well, the inescapable fact of the matter is that Marcus would probably still be alive if not for Michael's betrayal at the end of the war with Earth, and all the events that went the way they did because of it.

She doesn't still blame him for what Bester put into his head. They'd never have lasted this long if she did. But on this day, this one day a year, she can't bring herself to meet Michael's eyes. She knows he still carries the guilt of it, however pointless an exercise it is, and some years she tries to force herself to pretend this is a day like any other, where they can talk and laugh and touch without regret coloring it all.

She hopes one day they can both forgive her for not succeeding.

This morning she left the house early, and has spent most of the day holed up in her office. Delenn, thankfully, understands her need to escape reminders of the war and hasn't dropped by for either professional reasons or a cup of tea and conversation, like she does most days. But as the sun begins to dip below the horizon, Susan stretches and logs out of her terminal. She can no longer put off what she's not sure if she's been avoiding or anticipating all day.

Upon exiting the building, she doesn't take the usual left turn toward the maglev line that takes her home. Instead, she turns right, and heads down a sidewalk leading to the Anla'shok medical facility. The air is chilly, and she can smell snow on the sharp wind from the north.

When she reaches the tall, crystalline building, she follows the signs for cryogenic storage, and asks the medical acolyte on duty at the front desk if she can have a moment alone with storage unit 221-F. With one of those Minbari bows, the woman indicates she may pass through the door.

It's quiet in the cryo room, the faint background hum of machinery that keeps the units super-cooled the only sound except her own breathing. She remembers from last year that the one she wants is on the end. Cole, Marcus, reads the nameplate, along with the various statistics of age, height, weight, and species. The storage facility is arranged like a macabre set of drawers, with the bodies deep inside the wall, so she can't actually see him. She's glad; it would be obscene to view him like that, lying still and frozen, when she only remembers him as warm and constantly on the move.

She can still hear his voice perfectly in her mind, calling her name or quoting from one of those ancient books he loved. But his image is fading. She knows his eyes were blue, but can't remember the exact shade; the precise shape of his smile escapes her now.

She brushes her fingers over his name. It ought to be hers written there, or, more likely, on a gravestone on Earth. The universe had meant for him to see this day, not for her to be here, wishing he'd had more sense. She had never asked for him to sacrifice himself so that she could live.

"You bastard," she murmurs. "You gave me a gift I'll never be able to repay."

She can hear exactly what he'd say in response to that, can imagine the laugh in his voice. "Then maybe you should just say 'thank you' and enjoy it."

"Fat chance," she tells the storage unit.

This is pointless. With a sigh of frustration, she turns and leaves the room, then the building, exiting into a gathering darkness. As she's walking toward the maglev station, something quite literally runs into her.

She and the small Minbari child who just rammed his head into her knees both rebound from the impact. She manages to stay upright; he falls backwards onto his rear. Immediately she crouches down to see if he's injured.

"I'm fine," he says in that piping little kid voice she hears daily from her own child. He's looking at the sidewalk ahead rather than at her. "I'm sorry I ran into you. I was trying to catch the _nis'nek_ salamander behind you. But it's gone into the grass now."

"Sorry about that." She stands and offers him her hand. For someone who can't be more than five, his grip is strong when he pulls himself up. "You should watch where you're going when you're hunting salamanders." There is something hauntingly familiar about this boy, she thinks. Something about his eyes, or the intensity with which he focused on his goal...

"Zennier!" a woman's voice calls. A Minbari woman appears out of the growing gloom, catching the child's hand firmly in her own. "I told you not to stray so far ahead." She looks at Susan. Some Minbari still look askance at the humans who have moved to their world, but this one doesn't even seem to notice she's of a different species. "I apologize for my son. He sometimes grows so intent on something that he forgets the rest of the world exists."

Susan smiles at her, and it's the first time she's done so all day. "It's fine. My daughter does the same thing." She and the woman, Cathenn, fall into the usual parental exchange of names, ages, is-she-in-school-yet, what-year-is-he-in-the-Temple-academy, until finally Zennier's impatient tugging at her hand forces Cathenn to say they must be going. Susan waves as they leave, and receives a jaunty salute from the boy in return. The connection she can't quite make niggles at her for the entire ride home.

* * *

She arrives home to the smell of basil and vegetable soup, perfect for such a cold day. Michael knows it's one of her favorites, and she desperately wishes she could take up the offer inherent in it.

The moment she opens the door, Sofie comes running up to her, eager to show off something she drew in preschool that day. At this point, Susan would usually swing through the kitchen to kiss Michael hello, maybe comment on how good the food smells, before following Sofie to her room to see the latest art project, but tonight she just calls a simple, "Hey," before letting Sofie take her hand and drag her off. Michael calls back the same word, and she notes that he has carefully removed any possible emotional inflection from it.

She wishes again that she could be better about this. If they keep boxing up everything to do with the man who died for her, who died because of him, it's going to turn into a faultline running through their marriage, and one day it might well shatter them. But it's all still too present on this day, and the end of November is so hard. She is more grateful than ever for Sofie, who is her own bright and shining self, untarnished by the wars, for all that she is obviously also Michael's child.

He comes to get them for dinner a few minutes later. Sofie is especially talkative tonight, so her and Michael's own silences at the table are less awkward than they might have been. Tonight it's her turn to read to Sofie until she falls asleep, so after the nightly rituals of bath and brushing teeth, Susan watches her little girl pick out a parade of picture books, some in English, some in Adronato, and stack them carefully on the bed.

Once Sofie is settled under the covers, Susan sits next to her and picks up the first book in the stack: _Ranger Robert and Ranger Rathenn Make a Great Space Rescue_. Looking at the cover, which shows a dark-haired human man and a Minbari woman, both in long black Ranger robes, it hits her. The boy this afternoon—his determination, his inability to keep still while she talked to his mother—he reminded her of Marcus, as Marcus would have looked had he ever been able to dismiss the ghosts hanging behind his eyes. For a moment, she wonders, hope sparking in her heart. It is Delenn's belief, not hers, but...

"Mama?" Sofie asks when she's silent for too long.

"What? Oh, sorry, sweetheart." She opens the book, and keeps reading until Sofie's eyes start to drift shut.

She's almost asleep by the time they're done with _Konnier's Trip to the Great Temple_, and her eyes have closed all the way by the time Susan finishes pulling the blanket over her shoulders. She kisses her temple and murmurs, "_Sladkih snov._"

When she returns to the living room, she finds Michael at the window. "It's snowing," he says when he hears her enter the room, answering her unasked question.

"I thought it smelled like it this afternoon," she says, joining him at the window. It's only a flurry right now, but the flakes are growing bigger with each passing second. She stands a little in front of him so that she can peer out and see if it's covered the sidewalk.

"Sofie'll like it," he says, and she smiles. Sofie loved the snow last year, never tiring of making snowmen, snow angels, and kicking through it in her big red boots. Since Tuzanor is blanketed by it for nearly half the year, that's handy.

Something wistful in his voice, Michael says, "It's beautiful."

"Yes, it is," she replies, and looks at his translucent reflection in the window. He is watching hers, has been watching it for some time now, and for a long moment they each meet the other's reflected gaze. The snow tapping against the glass occasionally causes their images to waver and break, but they always come back whole.

She can't quite face him, not yet, not this year, but she leans against him and lets him fold his arms over her stomach as they watch the snow begin to pile up on trees and buildings, the same snow falling all over the city, here and at the Anla'shok hospital and on a certain lively Minbari child's home, the snow falling softly upon all the living and the dead.

**N.B. **The title is from Virgil, and means "the long, hard road."


End file.
